Author: LoveWorld UK

British real estate website Rightmove said asking prices for residential property fell in December and early January ahead of the expiry of a tax cut for buyers, but the country’s booming housing market remained busy. Prices for houses and apartments advertised between Dec. 6 and Jan. 9 were down by 0.9% from the previous month, slowing the annual pace of growth to 3.3% from 6.6% a month earlier, Rightmove said. But the number of buyers contacting agents was up by 12% and the sales agreed were up by 9% in January so far compared with the same period a year…

Investigative journalism nonprofit Project Veritas on Thursday released a leaked video that appears to show Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s internal discussions before President Donald Trump’s account was banned on the social media platform following the breach of the U.S. Capitol building. “You should always feel free to express yourself in whatever format manifestation feels right,” Dorsey said in the clip, purportedly secretly filmed by a Twitter “insider whistleblower.” “We are focused on one account [@realDonaldTrump] right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account, and it’s going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, and the…

Google and Facebook executives were placed on the defense this week as they were questioned on the role their platforms played in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. Protesters who stormed the Capitol used Google-owned YouTube and Facebook, among other platforms, before and during the storming. Pressed on whether Alphabet, Google’s parent company, missed the extent of the danger, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said this week that the company had been worried about “the possibility of real world harm” and “incitement of violence.” “I don’t want to say we clearly anticipated what happened last week, but the potential for violence was…

The government has rejected a report that following Brexit, it plans to tear up employment protections based in EU law – a strategy that Labour has called “a disgrace”. Proposals include an end to the 48-hour maximum working week, changes to rules about breaks at work, and removing overtime pay when calculating certain holiday pay entitlements, the Financial Times said. Another proposal would be to get rid of the current requirement for businesses to log information about daily working hours, to save on administration costs. The package is being drawn up within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the newspaper…

Thousands of businesses should be covered by their insurance for losses caused by coronavirus lockdowns, the UK Supreme Court ruled on Friday, in a test case that pitched the industry regulator against major insurance companies. Small businesses, from restaurants to nightclubs and wedding planners to beauty parlours, have said they faced ruin after attempts to claim compensation for business losses during the pandemic were rejected by insurers. Six of the world’s largest commercial insurers — Hiscox, RSA, QBE, Argenta, Arch and MS Amlin — said many business interruption policies did not cover widespread disruption after Britain’s first national lockdown last…

Amazon.com Inc was slapped with a class-action lawsuit on Thursday accusing the e-commerce giant of inflating the prices of ebooks in collusion with some publishers. The lawsuit alleges that Amazon and the five largest U.S. publishers, collectively called the ‘Big Five’, agreed to price restraints that cause consumers to overpay for eBooks purchased from them through a retail platform other than Amazon.com. The lawsuit comes a day after Connecticut said it was investigating Amazon for potential anti-competitive behavior in its business selling digital books. Amazon declined to comment. About 90% of eBooks are sold through Amazon, the largest U.S. eBooks…

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Wednesday that the Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump once he leaves office. “The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president. The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens,” Cotton said in a statement. Cotton said in his statement that he will oppose another Senate impeachment trial after Democrats in the House of Representatives, joined by 10 Republicans, voted earlier to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time in a 232-197 vote. 197 other House Republicans voted against…

Primark-owner AB Foods warned that the loss of sales from store closures could rise to over 1.5 billion pounds ($1.36 billion) if current lockdowns last until the end of March, but the group is confident of strong growth upon reopening. Unlike most rival retailers, which continue to trade online during lockdowns, Primark does not have an online shop meaning lockdowns in its main UK market and elsewhere in Europe have halted sales as 76% of its retail selling space is shut. AB Foods said in a statement that if all those stores stayed shut until Feb. 27, then the loss…

WhatsApp is battling mistrust globally after it updated its privacy policy to let it share some user data with parent Facebook and other group firms, and the backlash risks thwarting its ambitions in its biggest market, India. Though WhatsApp has yet to see mass uninstalls of its app in India, users concerned about privacy are increasingly downloading rival apps such as Signal and Telegram, research firms say, propelling them higher on the download charts and putting those apps ahead of their ubiquitous rival in India for the first time. The reaction in India – where 400 million users exchange more…

Parler is being held to a different standard than Twitter and Facebook, its CEO told The Epoch Times. “The standards that we’re held to are higher than that of Facebook and Twitter. And that is wrong, because that is giving preferential treatment to some clients and some customers and not others. And then abruptly terminating us with what I would call bad faith, and doing it so quickly, that there’s no possible way to remedy and doing it in a way so publicly that it tarnishes our brand, and it doesn’t allow us to get anywhere else,” John Matze told The Epoch Times’…